You know what happens when you have too many tabs open on your computer, right? The computer slows down. Switching between the various pages just leads us deeper into more stuff and often takes us away from what it is we want to do. Often times we get so caught up in chasing a piece of information we forget entirely what it is we set off to do!
The same thing happens when we allow too many projects to vie for our mental attention. We begin one project, another pops up in our minds and we are off on that tangent, then we think about a third or a forth project, pretty soon none of the projects are getting done, and we feel overwhelmed with our whole life. Well, just as we do on the computer, close some of those tabs, follow through on one project, maybe two, and allow the others to form a little line in our heads, or even better create that “to do” list.
Some of us fancy ourselves as accomplished “multi-taskers”, and this might be so, but I have a suspicion that what we are actually seeing in “multi-taskers” is the ability to focus here clearly, then focus there clearly, and so on so that it appears we are doing more than one thing at a time when in truth we are simply switching focus rapidly. This would be an interesting research project for someone! Can the human brain truly focus on more than one topic at a given moment?
But I digress, for me, and maybe you, I am more efficient, safer, and more productive when I allow my train of thought to remain clear, so I choose to close the extra tabs.
